“Dear David: I just created a website on baby toy safety. What should I do to make sure gazillions of people find me through the search engines?”

I can’t promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.

Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those “gazillions” to find it.

1. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don’t read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.

2. Have several pages of articles related to your website’s topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term “safe toys for babies”, while another might use the term “baby safety”.

3. What’s the URL of your website? Your name won’t help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.

4. What’s the title of your page? I don’t know how many times I see titles such as “Article” or “Contact us”. Don’t expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don’t expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page “Free article on safe toys for babies” or “Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today”. By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.

5. What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say “Contact the baby toy expert?” Or “about the baby toy expert”. Or links about baby toys?” Need I say more?

If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. “Life insurance” is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.

In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about.

Maggie knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking – not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com. She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Maggie find your website.

Google will show Maggie 534,000 resources on “bread baking”. Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to “easy bread baking” or “home bread baking”).

How do you get into the top 10 results so Maggie can find your website? You might have heard a lot about “search engine optimization” and “ranking analysis” and “algorithms”. It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 – 2 – 3 principle.

1. A search engine will show Maggie only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.

2. The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most “important”. This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.

3. The search engine will show Maggie the most “relevant” high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://TheHappyGuy.com relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Maggie’s search? By the number of times “bread baking” shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words “bread baking” included.

Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Maggies out there find your website and your book.

The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but “bread baking” might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be “easy bread baking” or “home bread baking”. The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.

The second is to prepare a link strategy. The “link exchange” pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Maggie discovers your book:

* The total number of incoming and outgoing links
* The importance of the sites you link to and from
* The relevancy of the sites you link to and from
* Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked
* What you include in the incoming and outgoing links
* Where on the page the links are placed
* How many links are on those pages
* How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links

* The ratio of links to content on the pages involved
You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.

The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.

One means of making sure your site receives maximum visibility is search engine optimization (S.E.O.). You must think in terms of search engine optimization from the earliest stages of planning and design if you want to receive heavy traffic from the major search engines. In order to optimize your site, you need to understand how search engines work, how web surfers search, and what elements of your site contribute to successful search placement. While much information (and misinformation) exists about search engine optimization, experts agree that the elements you must focus on are keywords, meta tags and links from other sites.

How Search Engines Work

Before delving into specific elements, it’s necessary to understand how search engines work. True search engines (as opposed to directories like Yahoo!) use a program called a “robot” or “spider” to “crawl” the web while gathering and indexing the information they find. A searcher receives the results of these crawls when s/he conducts a search. Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, every search engine (and literally thousands of engines exist) has its own criteria for indexing sites, and further criteria for determining the ranking of sites. It’s easy to see why S.E.O. consultants can make a handsome living – it’s virtually impossible for a single webmaster to know all of the various rules that will optimize his/her site for every engine.

Feeling Overwhelmed Yet?

While a search engine optimization consultant can provide a greater amount of detailed knowledge for an individual web master, experts tend to agree that there are a few rules that almost anyone can apply to optimize his/her site.

First, while thousands of search engines exist, most surfers do their searching on a handful of sites. Yahoo! generally accounts for half of all web searches. While they charge a fee for simply considering a business listing in their directory (currently $299), many business people may find that a reasonable investment, considering the popularity of this portal. Among true search engines, the most popular by far are Google and Overture. It’s important to know that many search engines actually get there results from these giants, so applying the rules that work for these two can help get your site listed in many engines.

Optimizing You Site

In order to make sure your site is listed in searches that directly apply to your type of business, it’s essential to use the best keywords and phrases. Keywords are the words that searchers use to find web sites that will give them the information they want. In order to take advantage of the power of keywords, you must find out what keywords and key phrases are most popular among the searchers you want to attract to your site, so you may want to consider using a service like Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) to find out the words and phrases that searchers are using. Once you’ve determined this, you want to place those words and phrases at the points in your page most likely to be noticed by search engines. Experts tend to agree that the best places to use keywords are in your page title, your page’s copy, and in the site’s meta tags.

The page title is likely the most important place to use the proper keywords, as all search engine spiders tend to look at it. Precision is key – use the keywords that are most likely to bring the right visitors to that particular page. While some consultants suggest using many key words, or many slight variations of key words, or repeated key words, search engines have caught on to these strategies and may actually penalize your site for using such tactics. According to Webmonkey.com’s Paul Boutin, it’s best not to include extra words, such as a company name; using only the keywords as site title will generally bring the best results.

It’s also important to use those keywords and phrases in the copy of the page, as spiders do look at this also. Note, for instance, how often I use phrases like “search engine opitimization” and “search engine” in this article. That’s deliberate. Keep in mind, though, that search engines have caught on to the practice of loading down copy with keywords to achieve higher rankings, and certain high ratios of keywords to overall copy may actually hurt your placement.

The third place to use keywords is in the site’s meta tags, which are part of the coding for the page. Again, it’s best to use only the words that will bring the best results – repetition or overuse of variations can hurt your optimization.

Finally, some consultants will suggest that regardless of your site’s content, you always include the most popular overall keywords in your title and meta tags. While this may bring more initial traffic to your site, you have to consider whether attracting searches on “Eminem” or “Spiderman” will benefit you in any way. Generally, it’s best to optimize your site so that you attract those searchers that would actually be interested in what you have to offer.

Link popularity

Another criteria that many search engines use for ranking is link popularity. Essentially, is your site linked from other sites, and are those sites ranked well in their engines? This can be a time consuming process for a webmaster, as getting links on other pages generally involves contacting the owner of that page and asking for a listing or agreeing to a “link swap”: you put a link on your page to their site, and they do the same for you. Again, don’t believe that you can fool the search engines through short-cut methods such as FFA pages, as the engine administrators have caught on to these, also. Also keep in mind that links on other reputable pages account for a high percentage of traffic – you really can’t lose by having your site listed on other site’s “Links” pages.

Some Final Thoughts

When optimizing your site for the search engines, it’s also important to remember that a high ranking in a search doesn’t necessarily mean more qualified traffic. As in many aspects of life, presentation is everything. If the listing on the search engine appears clear and professional, you’re more likely to receive more of the traffic that will benefit you. Boutin notes that the meta name field in the coding is important in this regard, as some engines use the information in this field for their site description. While you want to use keywords and phrases in this field, do so in a manner that still will make sense to a surfer looking for a site like yours.

Ultimately, search engine optimization involves using tried and true methods of design and writing to make your site user-friendly.